Lunchtimes in Bloomsbury: Waterstones Gower Street

I’ve already eaten my lunch at my desk as it’s been raining all morning. I’m still keen to leave the office for some cold fresh air. I cross Tavistock Square under my umbrella. Looking down at the weathered stone pavements, they look worn, shaped like a relief map of a landscape in Geography, bumpy and collecting little lakes and river deltas.

I walk on past the grand Church on the corner of Gordon Square, sandy yellow old stone stained and wearing away in the rain. I walk past the coffee guy with his little van he parks up each day, by the wooden benches that usually have students lounging about on. Waterstones is on the corner.

The building is a huge piece of gothic revival architecture. Ornate turrets with green copper roofs, stone relief work everywhere you look. It’s a huge statement of a building. Inside it is a large, multi-roomed sort of place. Most sections have their own little antechambers, military history leads on to world history, leads on to travel. I walk to my usual section, up the central stairs and to the right, into the poetry section, where they have a little armchair. I read across the rows and rows of poetry book spines, nodding when I see something unusual or especially good. I pick up a few books to read the first poem the book opens on. In this Waterstones, they mix in secondhand and antique books with the rest of their sections. It’s nice to see a few of the vinatge penguin poetry collections, with their vibrantly pattened front covers.

In the furthest corners of the buildings, the turrets provide reading nooks. The turret in the children’s section is a cosy nook festooned with toys and picture books, with a gorgeous view (even on a rainy day) from the casement windows out to the Georgian terraces on Gower Street. At a little table and chairs a dad goes through timestables with his daughter, waiting for the rain to slow or stop.

I don’t buy anything this time. I do another circuit of the building to avoid the rain, move down through the various categories towards biographies in the basement, next to the Ryman’s in house franchise.

I ready myself with my umbrella and swoop out onto the street, the rain steadily singing away above my head.